By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

TRANSPORT and Aviation Minister Glenys Hanna Martin yesterday accused Auditor General Terrence Bastian of “guesstimating” while conducting his most recent audit of the Road Traffic Department (RTD), claiming that the department’s current proceeds “do not correlate” with its estimated annual revenue losses in Mr Bastian’s report.

Mrs Hanna Martin said Mr Bastian’s “guesstimations” over the department’s previous revenue losses, a “reported average” of $26m annually from 2012 to 2015, do not match what officials are seeing with RTD’s new automated system.

The minister said although she was “not sure” of what the department’s earnings are to date, department officials are “seeing monthly trends, more or less the same numbers, and they’re not correlating with the numbers that were estimated” by Mr Bastian.

Mrs Hanna Martin, in acknowledging her and the department’s “respect” for Mr Bastian’s “constitutional independence” and duty to oversee government agencies, emphasised that the Auditor General was working in a “difficult” and “non-automated environment,” leading him to make his observations.

Last year, Mr Bastian found that the RTD may be collecting as little as 36 per cent of due vehicle licensing revenues in New Providence. At the time, he found that based on the 374,000 vehicle licence plates issued in New Providence, the department should be collecting at least $73m in annual government revenues.

Yet the audit, which assessed the RTD’s accounts for the three years to end-June 2015, found it was collecting a “reported average” of $26m annually.

That amounts to a potential $47m discrepancy according to The Tribune’s calculations, even with Mr Bastian and his team applying the lowest annual licensing fee to all 374,00 plates - regardless of whether some motor vehicles should attract the higher rates.

Mr Bastian and his team were unwilling to conclude that the RTD was collecting just over $1 out of every $3 for vehicle licensing due in New Providence, instead finding that this revenue stream was being “under recorded by a minimum of $10m”.

The Auditor General also found that the RTD had under-reported revenue generated from new vehicle licence plate sales by $234,000 for the three years assessed. With 49,800 plates produced over the 2012-2015 period for all vehicle categories combined, Mr Bastian said some $747,000 in revenue should have been generated at $15 per plate.

Yet just $512,982 was recorded by the RTD.

“The Auditor General, whose duty it is constitutionally to oversee agencies, and we welcome that and we respect his constitutional independence, he was working in a difficult environment in a non-automated environment because he was estimating and guesstimating,” Mrs Hanna Martin said of the report. “And he made ‘guesstimations’ and based on those ‘guesstimations’ he said revenue was not received. That has translated in the public domain as people (stealing). “That’s not what he actually said. He said ‘you should have licensed this amount of vehicles and therefore you should have gotten this revenue, you’ve not gotten this revenue so you have a shortfall in revenue’.

“Now why you don’t have that revenue he didn’t say, so people concluded one thing or another. The numbers we’re seeing now as of October are not correlating with the estimations or the ‘guesstimations’. But we have to wait, and I don’t want to say anything to undermine the Auditor General because I know he was working in a difficult, manual environment. But I trust that as we get beyond 12 months, because his estimation was based on a 12-month thing, we are seeing a monthly trends, more or less the same numbers, and they’re not correlating with the numbers that were estimated.

“But at the end of the year I’m trusting that the Auditor General can look at the numbers and see what findings he will make based on that first report working in a difficult, manual environment where it’s just very difficult. And the Auditor General, he has collaborated with the Road Traffic Controller and he has come as a matter of courtesy and he has seen the system. And so he will have to audit again.

“So in terms of the revenue I think that the revenue has increased from previous years, but not along the lines that the Auditor General projected, which talked about a shortfall of I think $10m annually.”

Mrs Hanna Martin went on to argue that Mr Bastian’s report was one based on an estimation of how many cars “should” have been licensed as opposed to how many were actually licensed. She suggested that was the result of “working in a manual environment” and not having irrefutable data such as could be provided by the department’s new automated system.

“And so we’re working with the Auditor General, so we hope at the end of this when he audits we’ll know what the facts are,” she said. “But I know thus far because the question has been asked, thus far the numbers that were projected in terms of vehicle registration (since October) do not correlate, unless in the latter half we have some incredible surge. But we are seeing trends monthly, more or less.”

Last year, Mrs Hanna Martin blamed the RTD’s reliance on “antiquated” manual processes for leaving it susceptible to fraud, corruption and waste. At the time, she pledged “zero tolerance for acts of malfeasance, particularly as it relates to public monies”.

Mrs Hanna Martin said the $8.3m initiative to modernise the RTD’s systems and processes, and $800,000-$1m outsourcing of licence plate production, would cut down on the opportunity for fraud and waste. She added that it would also improve the customer experience.